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How to Become a Facebook Powerhouse

Posted by
Jo Linsdell
at
7:00 AM

Before we jump into how to turn yourself into a Facebook Powerhouse, I think it's important that you realise what you're up against...96% of Facebook fans never return to pages they like! Your Facebook Page posts actually only reach 2-47% of your fans. Now I know these statistics sound pretty depressing, especially when you consider that your page is also in competition with over 50 million other pages on the social media site.

Here's a statistic to make you feel a bit more hopeful though: more than 1.47 million books have been shared on Facebook (as of May 2013).

You'll also be happy to know that for every Facebook fan you engage, there are 34 more reachable friends.

Not sure whether to use your profile or a public page? Your fan page content is indexed by Google and you can use ads, metrics, and a whole bunch of other tools making it the better option from a business point of view. Why not have both though? You can select which of the posts to you profile get seen by the public and which stay private. As people can subscribe to your public posts this gives you another channel through which you can connect with your audience. By using both a page and a profile you get the best of both worlds.

So how do become a Facebook Powerhouse?

Here's a list of a few tips and tricks to help you optimise your Facebook efforts:

1) Have a strategy - Get clear on what you want to accomplish on Facebook.

2) Create a compelling brand look - Use professional graphics to enhance your Facebook page. Always include a description and a call-to-action every time you update your cover image... make sure they contain a narrative, a call to action and a link.

3) Have a content plan - What are you going to post and when? Add something of value, include call(s) to action and build social equity with your target audience.

4) When you post and ask for likes or shares, it actually gets more engagement! Ask your audience to to interact and they will!

7) Grow your fan page - You have to tell people you have a page. Build your fan page by driving traffic from other channels. Put a link to your Facebook page in your email signature. Facebook follow buttons on your blog/website should be above the fold (don't make people hunt for it).

9) Best time to post? Look at your insights and see where you have the most engagement.

10) Fangate: Putting content behind a page that requires people to like your page to access content

11) Every post on Facebook has it's own unique URL. It's the timestamp on the post. Just click on the date of the post and it'll take you to the post url. You can then share that post on your other social media sites and invite your other followers to join in your Facebook conversations.

12) Create a private Interest List of great Pages & observe what they do that works. A great way for getting some new ideas.

Thanks for your comment Christine. I agree. I see far too many people on Facebook spamming people's walls with promo posts. It is OK to mention your book if it's relevant to the post and your comment goes beyond just a plug but just throwing out your link and posting a sales pitch is not.

A lot of people host promo parties and link share events on their pages where they invite you to post about your projects and share links to your website, blog or Facebook page. It would be better to keep plugs for these posts and use other comments to actually comment and concentrate on building relationships. Social media should be about being social not spamming.

Good post, Jo. Thank you for sharing. Where can I learn how to tag my personal profile in my fan page images and how to put "content behind a page that requires people to like" my page "to access content"?

To tag your photo's you just need to open up the photo post and click on the "Tag Photo" directly below the description of the photo ("tag Photo - Location -Edit" are the buttons you'll see listed). You then just click on the photo and type your name (normally it will automatically bring up a list of people that correspond to what your typing as you type it, in which case just click on your personal profile to tag it).

For the Fangate you need to use an app and install it on one of your page tabs. You can find how to info here http://kidcapsuleapp.com/blog/?p=348

This post has a few good ideas for how you can use fangates: https://www.binkd.com/social-media/fan-gate-facebook-increase-likes/